Some of the things people say are just plain funny, while others are extremely harmful. Quite often, things that are stated are only strange because of where they are uttered. This is like the visitor who goes to the OB ward to visit an obviously expectant mother. The visitor says, “Are you still here?” Then there is the man who is visiting at the funeral home and comments about the deceased, “My, he looks so nice”. My favorite is church bulletin humor. “The Pastor’s message: What the fool said”. Dumb things can often be quite entertaining.

When the time rolls around for elections, we are subjected to some of the dumbest things I have ever heard. You sometimes have to wonder how anyone could possibly be elected who appears to be totally brain dead. I love one-liners, and they probably are the best way to respond to dumb statements, if you are not still laughing after five minutes. Dumb things are not always verbal; sometimes they are put in print. I tend to do this in emails because I never spell- check them. That can get you into a lot of trouble, as some of you well know! Then there is social media. This is the king of written dumb things. It covers almost 50% of the comments posted. We live in a world that doesn’t think. That, of course, is the fruit of today’s liberal American education, and almost everyone I know struggles with thinking before speaking.

IN THE CHRISTIAN CIRCLES

Let me begin with dumb things preachers say. An oft repeated statement is, “The lost will be separated from God for eternity” or “The worst thing about hell is that God is not there”. Unless you have a different God than the one described in the Bible, that is a dumb statement. The God of the Bible is omnipresent. That means He is present always, everywhere, for all time and eternity. There is NO place where He is not eternally present. The psalmist put it this way: “If I ascend up into heaven, thou art there; if I make my bed in hell, behold, thou art there.” (Psalm 139:8)

My pet peeve involves a string of things that all mean the same thing. “I believe”, “I think”, “my view”, “my opinion is”. Let me be blunt. What the preacher believes, thinks, opines is not relevant. I don’t care. What we want to know is what the clear teaching of the Word of God says. If you don’t know, either say so or wait until you do know. The authority in the pulpit is the Word of God, not the imagination of the preacher. If you do know what the Bible says, then say it clearly and pointedly: “The Bible says…” That is not arrogance; it is obedience.

We should all agree that preachers telling lies in the pulpit is dumb. Everything we say ought to be tested with the truth. Let me focus on lying about time: “This is my last point”, “I am almost done”, “Just a minute more”. This is fine if it is true; but if you then ramble on for another half hour, let’s face it – you lied, and that is dumb. Oh, I see – “the Lord led you”. Why do we always blame our errors on God? That is also dumb. The best preaching doesn’t ever refer to time. It holds the attention of the listener so that, when the end does come, the listener is surprised.

The problem appears to be that there is more error taught in the name of God than truth. Part of this has to do with a tragic, casual approach to the study of God’s Word. Digging in the text is hard work. It takes time, energy, and persistence. I often wonder why anybody listened to me in my early years of preaching, and I wish I had known then what I know now. What I do know, for sure, is that I now know very little of the whole even after fifty-seven years of ministry!

A second problem with this issue of dumb things is the infringement of “historical theology” upon the clear teaching of the Scriptures. Instead of being like the saints at Bera (Acts 17:11). who “searched the scriptures daily, whether those things were so” too many preachers blindly accept what other men have said about the text. Everyone wants to be loved and accepted, so asking questions about historical positions is off base. To those who have chosen to be followers of a man, disloyalty is almost criminal. Even the faithful know better than to ask questions about historical conclusions that don’t make sense.

This would include the problem of the worship of scholars. I repeat: scholars and scholarship have great value for all of us, but they do us no service if we are not allowed to ask questions. How often are scholars wrong? The answer is “often”, and that is easy to prove. With so many and such varied conclusions about a text, they couldn’t possibly all be right. Maybe one of them is; but even if one is right, it means the majority must be wrong. Let me remind you that the Bible was not written to scholars; it was written to the common man. Deep inside, the liberal in you may be saying that this writer is opposed to scholarship and serious education, even if the evidence is the exact opposite.

THE HEART OF DUMB THINGS

The road to “dumb things” is paved with wrong interpretation. Actually, it is paved with wrong systems of interpretation. I am racing to finish the book “The Normal Hermeneutic”. In it I deal with the word “interpretation”. The Bible interprets itself. God put truth in, and He wants to lift it out of the text. Somewhere, it seems, we got the idea that God needs our help; so, we began to add our wisdom to that of the scriptures. We end by adding our ideas to the text. Our task is to find out what God has plainly said and to make sure that is what we teach. What has happened is that we teach what we think about what the Bible says and so end up saying a lot of dumb things.

An example of this problem is found in our own national government. The founding documents of this nation are its laws. The responsibility of the courts is to see that the original documents are upheld and that people obey those laws. Now enters a system that allows the courts to interpret the law rather than uphold what was written. The product is a corrupted judicial system that does not represent the original documents.

That is exactly what has been done to the Bible. Instead of letting the Bible speak, we have added our ideas and ignored the things we don’t like. So, we end up drowning in a sea of dumb theological ideas. And then there is music…but don’t even get me started!